Troubleshooter

Chapter 6 - Call for Action

Now it is out, 100 million USD missing. Not shabby. Nothing like a nice big stake. I hope you liked it so far. If you did, would you consider reading the story as a whole and not as Wattpad piece meal? Head over to ebook stores all over and order "Troubleshooter".  A mere 3 USD, it will be worth much more! But 'nuff said! On with the story.

PAUL SAT in the suite after Daven and Lornsen had briefed him on the details of the theft. Both men had left the suite to walk over to the club reception and Paul poured himself another Coke.

Was it too early for a Scotch? It was; he had to keep his head clear. The task at hand was an interesting challenge. It was, of course, different from stealing rocket facility plans in North Korea or pumping an informant from an axis-of-evil government. But it was similar in many aspects: It was time-boxed problem, to be solved by Friday noon. Which left three and a half days and the remains of today. So almost four full days. Plus nights. That put a physical limit to the number of resources that he could organize and manage in a short time period. To start the investigation in the company by tomorrow, Tuesday, he could involve, instruct, plan and run the operation with a maximum of two, maybe three other people to form a small team.

And then the strategy for the investigation itself. Paul had to rely on his intuition. To achieve anything from Tuesday to Friday, they would need to stir things up in order to see what fell out. That meant scaring the upper management and scaring the computer gods and maybe scaring some financial middle management.

Paul started a brief scan of the material that Lornsen had provided. The Strom Industries subsidiary that was missing the money was called Strom Defense Industries. Like the name suggested, Strom Defense built products for militaries around the world: remote-controls for weapons and software for land, water, and air equipment. Paul browsed financials, products and markets. Then he looked at short staff bios of the upper management. Michael Ny had been tasked right after the briefing by Henry Daven to provide additional bios of the in-house IT team as well as the accountants. It amounted to around fifty employees, out of ten-thousand overall working at Strom Defense. In a separate document, Sam Lornsen and the colleague who had started the ball rolling, described in simple terms why they believed that one hundred million was missing. In the end, they gave three theories how this could have been done.

One: Someone had made a grave intentional or unintentional accounting error.

Two: Someone had stolen the money.

Three: Someone had used the money for illegal purposes.

Paul smiled at that. All three possibilities sounded valid. Could be those three, could be a thousand other ways. Only the theft or illegal purpose was on Paul's agenda, the accounting error bit was kept on Lornsen's table to investigate.

He went over to a sideboard and carried the telephone to the big desk. From memory he started typing a phone number. He glanced at his watch. Past lunchtime.

The unhappy voice that shouted through the phone had a broad Liverpool accent. "Brady!"

"It's Paul Trouble. You free for a rush job?" Brady never had been the small-talk type.

Just the hint of a moment of surprise and the voice became a little softer. "Blimey, Paul Trouble. I thought, you had left the game. Didn't you become a bookkeeper or something?"

"Yes, I am. Not exactly a bookkeeper, but close enough: buying and selling companies. And yes, I am out of the game, but I have a company job for you. Are you free?"

"I can give you until next Monday; then I am off to my next job."

"Sold. Can you come down to London, ASAP?"